


Project Badass: Fatherhood Edition

by take-a-five (sweetcl0ver)



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Gen, Mac thinks about babies and gets sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 18:02:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10927122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcl0ver/pseuds/take-a-five
Summary: Mac always thought he would make a good dad.





	Project Badass: Fatherhood Edition

Mac always thought he would make a good dad.

It wasn't, like, a _serious_ thought. Mac was a tough, badass guy who mostly thought about tough, badass things. Babies weren't very badass, but sometimes they popped up in his life anyway. DB the dumpster baby, for instance. Mac had kind of liked taking care of him. Sure, maybe Dee had done most of the actual bottle-feeding and diaper-changing, but she was a woman so that made her an expert in that stuff! Mac didn't really hold DB much during the three or so days they had him, because his powerful arms might have crushed him, so he mostly left that to Dee. He kind of wanted to, though. Mac decided it must be a super primitive, masculine, protective instinct making those weird warm feelings bubble up in his chest every time he looked at the baby's big dumb eyes. Whatever. Probably for the best that Child Services came when they did. It was becoming a whole thing.

Mac kept thinking in the back of his mind that eventually he would get married and have kids like everybody else, but he didn't seriously consider babies again until Dee went into labor. After he and Charlie finally realized they would make way better dads than any of the losers Dee had banged recently, he was really excited at the thought of raising a kid! And then, even better, it turned out that Dennis wanted to be the dad too! Mac knew, on some level, that individually they wouldn't be great parents. But, he thought, with Dennis' sophisticated taste, Charlie's aggressive optimism, and his own badassery, they could make one complete father figure.

Mac also couldn't help thinking about how raising a child together would strengthen his friendship with Charlie and Dennis. Well, mainly Dennis. Charlie and Mac have always been together, ever since they were little. Charlie wouldn't leave Mac. He could barely leave Philly. Dennis could leave, though. He'd proved it earlier that year when he'd married Maureen Ponderosa and promptly kicked Mac out of their shared apartment, out of their _home!_ But if Mac and Dennis were both this kid's dads, they would always have a connection. Even though having a child hadn't kept Mac's parents together... and Mac's thoughts skip over that topic like a smooth, flat rock across the Schuylkill River, with an ease borne from decades of practice. 

When he finds out Dee had been carrying the baby as a surrogate for Carmen and her husband, the disappointment hits him harder than anything since... well, since Dennis marrying Maureen Ponderosa and kicking him out, to be honest. He knows that Dennis is right about Carmen and her husband making better parents than anyone in the Gang would. He gets it. But still. It would have been kinda cool.

Sometimes Mac thinks about Carmen and her husband and that baby and wonders if they're all doing okay. But only sometimes. He's not _gay_ or anything.

By the time Mac realizes that Carmen and her husband are not gay, but that he definitely, _definitely_ is, he is forty years old, single, far too broke to ever be able to afford a surrogate, and has a rap sheet long enough that no judge in their right mind would ever allow him to adopt a child. It looks like fatherhood is not gonna happen for Mac. It just isn't. Move past it.

And he _tries._ He does. But it feels like he barely has a second to catch his breath after he comes out of the closet for real and the world DOESN'T end before all of a sudden the _other_ Reynolds twin has a baby. It's all too perfect to resist falling back into that fantasy from... how long has it been now? Five years? Six? Time slips by him so quickly these days. Mac wishes he'd paid more attention. But here they are. Mac and Dennis have been sharing a bed for the past year. Dennis has a baby. Mandy wants a father for Brian Jr., but neither Dennis nor Mandy want a romantic relationship with one another. Mac and Dennis are pretending to be a couple. Mac and Dennis could be this kid's dads. They _could._ They have eighty years of life experience between them by now, surely that's enough to not fuck things up too badly. Mandy seems like she's sensible enough to balance out any schemes that go over the line. It could work this time. 

It doesn't.

Dennis leaves.

Mac blows up the Range Rover.

**Author's Note:**

> I started thinking about how Mac has tried to raise children with his friends at least two, arguably three times and how this is probably related both to him wanting kids and wanting his friends not to leave him. This is the result. Feel free to say hi on tumblr at [allophonosaurus](http://www.allophonosaurus.tumblr.com) or [take-a-five](http://www.take-a-five.tumblr.com%20).


End file.
